Once it gets into the 40's Fahrenheit are the bees able to find water if snow is still on the ground? If not what if you provided water in a black pan with a black landing surface near hives so they had a place to land drink and maintain flying body temps? Can you provide water in frame feeders, fondant, and pollen patties so they have everything they need? If you can get a brood cycle ahead of the game thats a big deal.

I was thinking of adding pollen patties around the end of next week. Some years the snow start melting and spring arrives mid march, other years winter hangs around till April. I figure the odds should start wighting in my favor of not having sub zero temps about that time as well. Last year was very warm and by March 12th all snow was gone and spring arrived a month early, by April colonies were packed with pollen and brood. I am sure we wont get that lucky again for some time but I sure would like to help them build up as much as I can without to much risk of death or major setbacks.

What about condensation on hive walls. I was reading an old book on google and the author wrote that they get water that condensates on walls etc that builds up all the time from the warmer days and cool nights. Is it not this melting frost and condensation that gives them the water they need over the winter. If they run out of honey and all they have is dry sugar that you give, how would they survive if their is not a source of water like I mention here.

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Personally, just me now ;); I wait till the P.... willows are coming on strong before adding 'anything' but sugar or syrup (too cold for syrup yet, for me anyway). I've been watching them today, and yes, they are getting something from snow; landing , resting, tongue lapping, and returning to hive (of course, many don't make it back). That's today's observation with Super ;) Hive.

thomas

« Last Edit: February 25, 2011, 08:08:20 AM by T Beek »

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Can you provide water in frame feeders, fondant, and pollen patties so they have everything they need? .

In Australia there was a research. They asked, can they keep colony stong with patty feeding over the short winter that bees are ready to attack on canola fields then. The hives got very bad nosema and they had less bees in colonies than in natural way hives.

YOu see what happens when you collect in USA thousands of colonies to South over winter. Artificial nutritin does not help them enough. Colonies become sick when they do not get food from nature.

When things are not OK, colonies aare easy to get chalkbrood and then is takes time to get ridd off it.

with 20 years experience Beenuts, I do not recommend any of your proposal. Patty feeding is difficult enough to learn.

Try to get your colonies strong in late summer. It is easier than rear weak hive strong in spring.

2 #And don't split your strong hive is spring. They give more value as strong when they rear their brood masses. You may give to the weak cony a frame of emerging bees and it gives a huge boost to small hive.

That I have wo0ndered sometimes why? Where the advantage went that I had super colonies?

That was before I used patty feeding.

In my climate snow melts away at the beginning of April and bees start to search pollen. If sun is shining, bees come out and they perhaps get some pollen. When cloud goes in front of sun, bees drop down. Those who drop on snow or in shadow,get cold and do not rise again.

So even 50% of colony bees may die on their trips in April. All wintered bees will die before end of May.

If I start in natural way, willows starts blooming first of May. Then after 3 weeks new bees start to emerge. Then quickly old bees are gone.

During first generation of brood a huge cluster give no special help. They have that 3-4 broof frames what the half size colony has.

But when I start to feed 7.4. patty, I get new nurser bees when willow has started to bloom.

In a big cluster it happens a brooding explosion. Soon the hive has 10-15 frames of brood. They have still their wintered bees alive and they can raise a bigger brood ball.

Before my patty feeding years I trued to stimulate some hives with extracted honey frames which had pollen and honey. It helped paractically nothing.

Yes, folks believe that sugar feeding helps build up but it is not true.

No one claim against syrup feeding but most try to claim against protein feeding even if they have done it.

Does it actually help then?

When you start patty feeding, bees are ready to forage 2 months later. It depends what are foraging weathers then. Usually my hives get 15 kg per hive dandelion honey, but if it becomes a rainy week, they eate most of they yield.

Last summer my friend said that patty feeding helped nothing to get dandelion honey. It is true because it was only one foraging day during blooming. But soon begun raspberry blooming and it was huge. The weight of balance hive raised 8 kg a day.

syrup needs to be thin to stimulate bees -thin as nectar-syrup needs to be thick for benefit of feed for bees- when you use sub for Protein-There has to be CARBOHYDRATE as-well-thin syrup will provide this as well as stimulate brood rearing-finski feeds huge amounts of sugar syrup to his bees before winter sleep-it is this he is counting on for his carbohydrates-but he gets no brood rearing stimulation from the winter stores-RDY-B

Can you provide water in frame feeders, fondant, and pollen patties so they have everything they need? .

In Australia there was a research. They asked, can they keep colony stong with patty feeding over the short winter that bees are ready to attack on canola fields then. The hives got very bad nosema and they had less bees in colonies than in natural way hives.

YOu see what happens when you collect in USA thousands of colonies to South over winter. Artificial nutritin does not help them enough. Colonies become sick when they do not get food from nature.

When things are not OK, colonies aare easy to get chalkbrood and then is takes time to get ridd off it.

with 20 years experience Beenuts, I do not recommend any of your proposal. Patty feeding is difficult enough to learn.

syrup needs to be thin to stimulate bees -thin as nectar-syrup needs to be thick for benefit of feed for bees- when you use sub for Protein-There has to be CARBOHYDRATE as-well-thin syrup will provide this as well as stimulate brood rearing-finski feeds huge amounts of sugar syrup to his bees before winter sleep-it is this he is counting on for his carbohydrates-but he gets no brood rearing stimulation from the winter stores-RDY-B

Try to get your colonies strong in late summer. It is easier than rear weak hive strong in spring.

Yup broke Rule#1 last fall, I will know better next time.

I went into winter with 7 hives-I came out with 6. One is incredibly weak and may or may not make it to April. On the others, yesterday I was cleaning off the SBB trays and noticed a pollen/trash debris field that would have been from 5-6 strong frames so I think I'm good on the rest.

Avoid spring splits to obtain greater harvest of spring blooms. After which I would split, sometime in June, and then let the bees build back to a large hive or the late summer forage of blackberries and such. A large hive of bees, with full stores come October will is almost garunteed to make it through the winter sans disease or damage (blow overs etc).

A split in mid-June gives both the hive and its split ample time to rebuild. But if you really want a large honey crop, keep the bees building comb in the brood chamber and don't split. See an earlier post on the subject entry #18: http://forum.beemaster.com/index.php/topic,31631.0.html

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just seams Harsh system-until you get the right formula-that wont get hard or start to mold sounds like your patty formula is for sugar patty -50% not protein -the bigest set back beekeepers make is to try and do everything on the cheap and dont invest the $$ it takes to prepare high quality protein for the bees-cost is about $10-$15 per hive if done correctly will pay back ten fold-RDY-B

I do not understand your thinking. How can you put "high" protein into the hive without 50% sugar?However, bees need much sugar too. What goes wrong?

Normal bee bread in combs has 30% honey-sugar.

I use now much dry yeast because I get it very cheaply. When I make that patty porriage, sometimes it makes air bubbles, which means that yeast is fermenting. I add sugar and it stops. You see that it is critical point.